Elizabeth Case-Carter / The Post-StandardDarrell June, of Fabius, operates the "Pothole Killer" Friday afternoon on Buckley Road in the town of Salina. June has been a heavy equipment operator with the Onondaga County Department of Transportation for 10 years.

Syracuse, NY--Don’t get Richard Capria going on the subject of potholes.

“I don’t like Woods Path Road from Elmcrest Road to Elmcrest Elementary. The first 300 feet is good. It’s the town of Clay. But once you cross into Salina, it’s all heaved and cracked and broken. There are holes in it. It needs to be resurfaced,” said Capria, a sales manager for Tony Rotella’s Body Shop, which sells tires.

This time of year, everyone has a favorite pothole story.

Park Street at the Carousel Center entrance has become so rutted and bumpy it looks like a cow path.

Don’t turn too soon from Hiawatha Boulevard onto North Salina Street or you’ll run into a median that is more crater than road.

In Liverpool, there are holes at almost every intersection on Oswego Street through the village center.

And watch out for that crater at Hiawatha Boulevard and Seventh North Street, across from Crouse-Hinds.

Depending on with whom you speak, this is either the worst pothole season ever experienced by Central New York, or it’s not so bad.

“The winter was hard to our roadways more so than the snow,” said Thomas Simone, Syracuse’s first deputy commissioner of public works. “We had a couple of weeks where we didn’t get above the mid-20s. Any water that did generate from snow melt and found its way into an infiltration area, froze and then thawed, and potholes blossomed,” he said.

Yet, in Onondaga County, the database for pothole complaints is running relatively light this year, said Brian Donnelly, the county’s commissioner of transportation.

People usually aren’t shy about reporting potholes, so it’s difficult to say why there are fewer reports, he said.

Tell us about your worst pothole

Call The Post-Standard’s Tips Line at 470-0600, or email citynews@syracuse.com. Please give us the location and we’ll check it out. We’ll continue writing about potholes.

For city of Syracuse maintained roads, call 448-CITY
For Onondaga County maintained roads, contact the maintenance facility near the pothole.
Jamesville, 435-3400
North Area, 435-5452
Camillus, 484-1550
Marcellus, 673-1681
Not sure which facility to call? Contact Glen Ireland, senior motor equipment dispatcher for Onondaga County, 435-3205.

For Oswego County maintained roads, 349-3437
For Madison County maintained roads, call 366-2221
For Cayuga County maintained roads, call 253-1366Potholes form when water seeps into an imperfection in the road surface. In the winter the water freezes, pushing against the asphalt. When the road thaws, melting ice leaves a void.

Cars and trucks driving over the cavern press the asphalt down, grinding it up and creating a hole, said Gene Cilento, a spokesman for the state Department of Transportation.

The more traffic a road gets, or the older a road gets, the more likely it is to have potholes. The worst potholes appear on roads that have a concrete base, overlaid with several layers of asphalt, he said. Water seeps through multiple layers of asphalt to the concrete below, creating the deepest holes, Cilento said.

Generally, road crews will try to use cold asphalt filler to smooth out potholes during the winter. “Standard cold patch ... the reality is it doesn’t hold well. You fill a hole and it lasts a day, a week, a month,” said Donnelly.

A machine the county has nicknamed “The Pothole Killer,” which uses hot asphalt, appears to do the best job, he said.

Last year the county leased the machine that blasts a hole with air to remove debris, and fills it with a hot mix of liquid asphalt. Potholes repairs made by the machine appear to last longer, Donnelly said.

Generally the deepest potholes in this area reach 4 inches, and the widest go 12 to 18 inches in diameter, Cilento said. “When you drive over them you know you always think they’re so much bigger,” he said.

The state’s problem areas this year appear to be along Route 31 in Cicero and Clay, Route 370 in Liverpool and Route 11, north and south of Syracuse, Cilento said.

The biggest pothole Cilento said he’s ever seen was in New York City in 1984 when a water pipe under a roadway burst. The water ate through the dirt under the road, which gave way as a brand new Porsche drove over it.

All that you could see was the Porsche’s rear end sticking out of the hole, Cilento said.

David Lassman / The Post-StandardA pothole at the corner of Seventh North St. and Hiawatha Blvd. near the Crouse Hinds plant.